Tag Archives: hitsville

The Golden Age of Girl Groups

The 1960s are the golden age of American girl pop groups. (the ones that sing) They came in three to four girls, wearing similar outfits, and sometimes even similair hairdo’s. The names of these groups started with The. The Marvelletes, The Chiffons, The Shirelles, The Ronettes, The Velvelettes, The Cookies, The Blossoms, The Exiters, The Shangri Las, The Dixie cups, The Sweet Inspirations, The Sensations, The Angels, The Orions, The Carefrees,The Jewels, The Chantels, and much much more (we’ve read that there were about 750 girl groups at one point)
Phil Spector was a big time producer of girl groups (The Ronettes, The Blossoms,The Crystals…) so was Motown (The Supremes, The Marvelettes, The Velvettes….) 60% of the top 100 singles released by girl groups during the sixties came from Hitsville, U.S.A., as Motown was called.

Songs were written by professionals (such as Carole King, Nicolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, Neil Sedaka) who could custom fit the music and lyrics to the needs of te teenagers. Music was made (written, produced, sold, recorded, auditoned etc etc) in The Brill Building, it was the most prestigious address in New York for the music business

“Every day we squeezed into our respective cubby holes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, and maybe a chair for the lyricist if you were lucky. You’d sit there and write and you could hear someone in the next cubby hole composing a song exactly like yours. The pressure in the Brill Building was really terrific”
-Carole King Quoted in The Sociology of Rock by Simon FrithContinue reading →